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How do you find a broken capacitor on a board? The article says it was clear that the cap was "swollen" but how do I know what a swollen cap looks like? And w

• 101_101 5y ago
  you look for a short and try to isolate the section. there are lot of videos on youtube. try eevblog and old rossmann videos. electronic repair school is also good. edit: you will be able to tell a swollen cap, but if you are not sure you should definitely learn the basics first. large caps can store a charge and can hurt you.
• ta988 5y ago
  look at the other capacitors. the top is really flat. you can even spot those that start to fail because light will reflect slightly differently on top of them.
• Fradow 5y ago
  It's very noticeable when you pay attention and compare it to the others. There are generally a lot of capacitors there, and only one or two will be swollen (the top part is supposed to be flat or even slightly curved inward, if it's curved upward, it's bad). Really, if it even looks slightly out of place, change it, capacitors are dirt cheap. I'm not sure it can be broken without being swollen, or at least that's not a frequent failure mode. Having repaired a few displays just like that, I can say it's really easy provided you are able to open the display and solder on a basic level, which anyone can learn in an afternoon. On the other hand, not all display will be that easily repaired. Sometimes, you cannot easily identify any swollen capacitors, or there is a burn mark somewhere else, or something else that you cannot identify (and thus order a replacement for). In those cases, unfortunately it generally doesn't make sense to bring it to a shop to be repaired by pros.